


impaling

by escapismandsharpobjects



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: FebuWhump2021, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Impaling, Whump, this is not the best and i do apologize, welcome back to the Me Beating Riker Up Saga!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29209449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escapismandsharpobjects/pseuds/escapismandsharpobjects
Summary: febuwhump day 4: impaling.Who the hell gets impaled on a starship?he wondered briefly, and half-grinned to himself at the absurdity of the situation. It was better than crying about it, anyway.“Commander Riker, report.”He groaned.Iwantto report,he thought at Captain Picard’s voice,but certain circumstances have made that impossible.
Relationships: Beverly Crusher & Jean-Luc Picard, Beverly Crusher & William Riker, Jean-Luc Picard & William Riker
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	impaling

**Author's Note:**

> hi!! what is up! i hope you like this fic :) i did research what it feels like to be impaled but i did not feel like figuring out whether there are lab rooms on the enterprise (i feel like there must be but who can say) and what kind of cutting tools they might use so. that is left ambiguous. i am lazy and haven't watched tng in a hot minute. sorry ab that but it's not important anyway. hope u enjoy!

Several members of the Engineering division had been working on an experiment for a few days now. Riker had figured it was about time that he checked it out, if only to have something to say to Data during their shift when he inevitably brought up Geordi’s involvement. 

It was a weird-looking thing. Various lengths of thin metal rods stuck out from a wall in one of the lab rooms. Strings of  _ something  _ were looped around the rods, with some kind of glowing material traveling along them. Riker stepped closer, touching one of the strings. A jolt of electricity zapped his fingers, and he pulled them away in surprise. He made up his mind to not touch anything else, and turned around to comm Geordi and ask him what all this was. 

Just then, the ship jolted sharply, like it’d been hit, and he went stumbling backwards, slamming into one of the metal rods. 

The rod caused only a minor ache in his back, so he stepped forward, intending to rush to the Bridge and see what was going on. But the second he moved his foot, something was...pulling? on his shoulder, effectively trapping him to the wall. He reached up with his left hand to hit his communicator, and suddenly his shoulder exploded into pain. 

He turned his head to look at it, then immediately wished he hadn’t. It had barely hurt before he’d looked. 

The metal rod was sticking clean through his left shoulder, its tip gleaming red with blood, which he could see steadily dripping down his shirt, darkening its red color. 

It  _ hurt. _ His shoulder felt like it was burning, a white-hot pain that made him wish he’d passed out. He could feel the blood dripping down his back as well as his front, sticky and warm and altogether an extremely discomforting situation. He made a soft noise of pain that could have generously been called a wince. 

_ Who the hell gets impaled on a starship? _ he wondered briefly, and half-grinned to himself at the absurdity of the situation. It was better than crying about it, anyway.

“Commander Riker, report.”

He groaned.  _ I  _ **_want_ ** _ to report, _ he thought at Captain Picard’s voice,  _ but certain circumstances have made that impossible. _ His left arm refused to move, and he worried that moving his right would only twist the metal inside of him and make everything worse. He hoped that his silence would serve as a good enough cry for help. 

“Commander Riker.  _ Report.” _ The Captain’s voice was straddling the line between angry and worried.  _ “Commander.” _

The room fell silent as Picard stopped talking, leaving only the unsettling sound of his own blood steadily dripping onto the floor. Riker hoped the silence meant that someone was coming to get him. 

Moments later, the door to the lab slid open. Riker glanced to it, relieved when he saw the familiar shape of Captain Picard.

“Captain,” he said, in a voice much weaker than he’d ever admit to using. He’d never been so glad to see anyone in his life.

_ “Will,” _ said Picard, reaching for his combadge. “Picard to Crusher.”

“Dr. Crusher here.”

“I’m with Commander Riker in Lab Four. He’s been impaled on a metal rod.”

There was a brief moment of silence.  _ “Impaled?” _

“Yes. You may want to come down here, he’s lost quite a bit of blood already. I don’t know that moving him is the thing to do.”

“On my way.”

“Y’r....not gonna move me?” Riker asked. He didn’t like the sound of that. How was he supposed to get help if he couldn’t move? Was he dying?

Picard, evidently sensing his fear, quickly said, “We  _ will  _ move you. Dr. Crusher simply needs to figure out how.” 

“Okay.” That sounded better than dying, anyway. 

Dr, Crusher herself arrived a couple seconds later, hurrying over with a variety of medical supplies in her arms and a look of worry on her face.

“How did this happen?” she asked gently, checking his vitals.

Suddenly, he recalled the ship’s sudden movement, and a jolt of worry went through him. What had happened? Had they been hit? 

“Wh’ happened? Ship moved.”

“We brushed against the edge of a geomagnetic storm. I suppose you were unlucky enough to be standing in front of this contraption at the time,” said Picard, looking warily at said contraption.

Riker nodded slightly. “Fell back on ‘t. Didn’t even feel it at first. Then I looked.”

Dr. Crusher made a noise of sympathy from where she was inspecting the wound. She poked around it for a few seconds and pressed something to it (which _ hurt, _ despite his best efforts to appear to the other two that it hadn’t). “We need to cut this metal away from the wall,” she decided.

“Why?” Riker asked, as Picard went to get the necessary tool. 

“I don’t want to take you off of this rod, not yet. We’ll keep it in you until we get you to Sickbay, and then I’ll remove it.”

That sounded like a suitable plan, he decided. Sickbay sounded like the best place in the universe to him at the moment. 

Picard returned with some cutters just as Dr. Crusher was saying, “Will, you’re going to have to stay awake for this.”

He nodded. He didn’t particularly like that fact, but he understood well enough that if he were knocked out, he’d slump over and probably only make his injury worse. Granted, he wouldn’t be awake to feel it…

The actual cutting of the metal took only a second, but as soon the piece inside him was disconnected from the wall, he almost collapsed to the ground, crying out in pain as the movement jostled the metal rod. He would have  _ completely  _ collapsed, had Picard not caught him. Apparently his legs hadn’t been holding his body up so much as the metal had been forcing him to stand. 

An arm wrapped around his right shoulder, taking on his weight, and a hand grabbed his left hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

“Dr. Crusher to Transporter Room Two. Three to beam directly to Sickbay.”

The second they arrived, people were rushing up to them with all manner of supplies, and they sat him down on a table, and suddenly the metal rod was being pulled out of him, excruciatingly slowly and painfully, and quite a bit of blood went along with it, and he wondered whether or not that was supposed to happen, and then finally he felt the prick of a hypo, and finally the pain stopped.

**Author's Note:**

> dw about the end he's completely fine i just get tired of writing scenes where characters wake up in a hospital setting lmao. anyway thanks a billion for reading this!!! love u <3 (i will love u even more if u leave a comment!)


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